João Louro

	Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits: Abílio Leitão

Having graduated in painting at Ar.Co, his first exhibitions were held in the early 90s. It was also around this time that he joined efforts with João Tabarra, forming the Entertainment Co. duo. The subversive role of these two artists is intimately related to their common interest in the criticism of the conditions of production and the circulation of works of art, as well as all the issues that are relevant to the concepts of authorship and signature. Of their conjoint work, the highlights are the Read my Lips - All Guilty project, presented within the framework of the 1996's Manifesta, in which the "state of the art" triggered a series of interviews to artists and museum directors, emphasizing the role of international circulation for an artist's recognition; but also to Air Bag, The Return of the Real (Museu do Chiado, Lisboa, 1998), in which the artists manipulated the mechanisms of signification and mediatic dissemination, presenting thus a spectacular exhibition whose main criticism is the logic of the spectacle itself. His more recent Blind Paintings were presented at the Venice Biennial 2005. ¶ As for João Louro's individual path, and in tandem with his generation, quoting has become its substantiated and structured device of choice. His work is converted into reading displays, and their meaning is placed beyond the actual object, at the modern, post-industrial society's cultural horizon. There are two sides to the quoting in Louro's work: the nominal aspect, which evokes a name or a designation whose own resonance is communicative, and the formal aspect, given the fact the work itself appropriates the apparent form of a previous work, thus establishing a further link. In his retrospective Blind Runner (Centro Cultural de Bélem, Lisbon, 2004), these two aspects were quite well-connected, drawing up a topography of references that are personal as much as generational, and questioning writing, language, or eliciting a revision of the history of images in contemporary culture. Minimalism and pop culture, structuralism and post-structuralism, authors such as Guy Debord, Georges Bataille and Walter Benjamin, artists such as Donald Judd or the ever-pervading Duchamp, are but part of João Louro's lexicon put to use in order to express his own vision of art and culture, in the form of self-referential systems.

  

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